Dane eyeballed Kieran’s and Oz’s khakis in annoyance. “I said everyone should wear jeans.”
“Chill, Bridezilla.” Jax stretched out his own denim-covered legs. “We all ducked out of work to get here on two hours’ notice.”
“And I don’t want the damned hats.” Dane nodded at the shopping bag between Theo’s feet.
The two grandmothers in bright floral silks sitting next to Jax shot Dane dark looks.
“I heard you the first time.” Theo slid the bag containing the fedoras farther out of sight.
“Did you make him sign a prenup?” Kieran asked Gideon.
“No.” Gideon’s tone dared Kieran to keep pushing.
Dane swallowed. Fuck. Gideon had said he had a contingency plan if Dane had refused to marry him. Did Gideon have any contingencies in place if Dane did agree? Taking care of himself wasn’t exactly tops on Gideon’s skills list.
Dane touched Gideon’s arm. “I need to talk to you.”
Gideon’s face, which had been watchful, went blank.
Dane led him down near the florist shop, which also offered an assortment of rings, veils, blue-ribboned garters and champagne flutes. “I’m not changing my mind,” Dane said in a low voice, hoping the marble wouldn’t echo it too far.
“So you want a bouquet?” Gideon asked dryly.
“No. I—there’s some stuff I thought of.”
Gideon waited.
“I still owe over twenty thousand on student loans.”
“That’s your emergency confession? New York doesn’t have community property, and even if it did, you incurred the debt while single.”
“What happens when—if I don’t need insurance anymore?”
“We do the paperwork in reverse.”
“Divorce.” Dane needed to hear it. It sounded even more serious than marriage.
“Yes.” Gideon’s eyes narrowed. “Dane, stop freaking out. It’s me. It’s you. It’s a piece of paper.”
Dane knew that. He did. The tension and excitement around him must be slipping into his pores the way all the scent molecules were setting off alarms in his limbic brain. He hadn’t been this nervous a few days ago, with—out in Westhampton. Why was he freaking out with Gideon of all people? Gideon was too practical to get swept up in the trappings of ritual and ceremony.
“Okay.” Dane looked over Gideon’s shoulder and spotted large anthurium flowers sticking out of a bucket. The yellow fleshy spike of the spadix stuck up like an erect cock from the waxy red base of the flower. Dane smiled. “Wait. I do want to get a flower.”
Gideon turned and saw the direction of Dane’s gaze. Lips curling in, Gideon shook his head slightly.
“Join hands.” Despite having to do this a hundred times a day, the black woman behind the podium had friendly enthusiasm in her smile and her voice.
Until turning to pass the cock flower back to Jax, Dane hadn’t realized the grip he’d had on the stem would have brought him to his knees if it had been on his own dick. As it was, only the tendons around his knuckles ached.
Dane’s hands felt icy in Gideon’s warm ones. Cold and clammy versus warm and dry. Didn’t he ever get nervous? Anxious?
Of course not. Gideon had every feeling on lockdown.
But he noticed everything, right down to the panic sweating into Dane’s palms. He gave Dane’s hand a squeeze as they started the service. The vows. The only chink in Gideon’s armor was a reflexive twitch as the clerk read his full name, Gideon Domenic DeLuca. But his I will was strong and clear.
Dane licked his lips before giving his own consent. No safeword here. Well, except divorce.
“Are you exchanging rings?” the clerk asked.
“Yes,” Gideon said.
They hadn’t talked about that, but Dane didn’t have time to be surprised as Jax tapped his arm. With a grin showing off his Hollywood-white teeth, Jax dropped a plain gold band into Dane’s hand, while Theo did the same for Gideon.
The ring was nothing like the heavy, wide platinum band he’d picked out with Spencer. This was barely a centimeter wide, so light Dane closed his hand around it to make sure it didn’t disappear. He had to stop making comparisons.
Gideon went first, repeating the specific promise to love in sickness and in health and to forsake all others as long as they both should live. As Gideon slid the ring onto Dane’s finger, he got a good look at Gideon’s face, at that avid watchfulness.
Things blurred after that. A pitcher of margaritas blurry. Dane knew he said his lines right, knew that they kissed, because his lips tingled with the pressure. But the details slipped from his usually flawless memory like his brain was made of Teflon.
The clerk congratulated them and thanked them on behalf of the City of New York for allowing her to perform this happy service, and that was it. The next thing Dane knew, Jax was shoving the flower stem back in his hand.
“Take your I-heart-dick flower back for the pictures.”
They’d declined the services of any of the photographers lurking in the long marble hall, but Theo insisted on a few shots in front of the mural of the building.
“Let’s have a kiss, Mr. and Mr. Archer.”
Dane gaped at Gideon. From the flash, he figured Jax or Theo had snagged the shot of Dane’s fish face for blackmail.
“You changed your name?” he asked.
Gideon had done most of their paperwork online the night before. All Dane had needed to do was hand over his birth certificate and license and sign.
“I told you I was going to. Why wouldn’t I take advantage of a chance to ditch that bastard?”
Dropping his father’s in exchange for Mama T’s surname. She’d have liked that. “But your license to practice law, your career reputation, is all—” This wasn’t a real marriage, wasn’t going to last.
“Now they want to talk,” Theo interrupted in his theater voice. “Can’t stay out of each other’s pants for seventeen years and they choose now for a discussion.”
Theo was acting as if there was more to the process than just Dane’s need for insurance. He glared at him.
“Kiss,” Theo ordered.
“Yes, Director.” Gideon’s voice was patient.
After that, Kieran and Oz took over photography duty to snap shots of the four of them together. Then they yielded the backdrop to the next couple.
Always in a hurry, Theo moved ahead of them, Kieran keeping pace. Their heads leaned together.
“Do you really have to go back to work right now?” Theo might have thought he was whispering, but the marble echoed it back. “You can’t get some… lunch first?”
“I do have to go through Times Square on my way back up,” Kieran said. “Lunch at the theater?”
“I thought I raised you better than to stoop to euphemisms, Theo,” Dane called to him.
“As if we didn’t know what your plans are.” Theo turned to walk backward a couple of steps.
A guy in his late twenties intercepted Jax just before they escaped onto the street. “Big fan. Thank you so much. Your, uh—that interview you did with Ellen really meant a lot to me.”
“Thank you. I appreciate it.” Jax’s voice didn’t change completely when he was doing his public persona, but it deepened slightly.
Through the extra attention Jax’s coming out had earned him, Dane had been able to study Jax “on stage” a lot more in the past few months. Whatever had made his previous interactions seem too studied was gone. Now when Jax turned it on, it was as if his natural charm was cranked up to eleven. Shaking off the burden of being closeted hadn’t killed Jax’s career, only sent it in a new trajectory.
“Want a picture together?” Jax offered.
“Really?” The guy fumbled for his camera.
Jax posed with him for a selfie.
“Are you here—are you getting married?”
Jax blushed. “Um. No.”
Not yet, Dane heard at the end of that. Goddess bless them all, fifty years of fighting for gay civil right
s just to wrap themselves in heteronormative rituals the first chance they got. He might have been channeling his bio dad for that, but Dane felt like a traitor to the queers who’d flung beer bottles at cops during the Stonewall riots. He tossed his anthurium in the trash. Brows raised, Gideon tossed his in after it.
At last Gideon managed to shepherd them all out and into the park across the street.
“Are we celebrating with lunch somewhere?” Oz asked.
At the mention of lunch, Jax’s eyes grew wistful. “I really should get back on set. Tight shooting schedule.” He was hush-hush about the thing he was working on but assured them they’d hear all about it by mid-October.
The idea added weight to Dane’s already tense shoulders. “I think there was enough precelebration on the weekend. I’m kind of tired.”
Gideon shot a focused glance at Dane’s face, studied him, and then turned to put his hand up for a cab. Dane pulled it down.
Theo kissed them good-bye, and Oz offered Dane a hug.
“If you need anything—” Jax began, holding Dane in those buffed-for-camera-closeups arms.
“I know, babe.” Dane grabbed him again and pressed in tight for a minute. “Thanks.”
“We’ll keep you briefed,” Gideon said.
Theo made a sound that was half snort and half laugh and snagged a cab for himself and Kieran.
Jax and Oz headed south toward the library and city hall.
Gideon squinted in the slanted sunlight. “Are you tired?”
“Just of their….” Dane dug for a way to say it. It wasn’t only the press of Jax and Theo’s concern, though he could feel that, but it was also the push of their expectations, their seeing him and Gideon as all nicely settled. But Gideon nodded, and Dane didn’t have to finish. Gideon got it.
“So, Mr. Archer, now that we have rid ourselves of the pressures of well-meaning friends, what do you want to do?” Gideon asked.
“Go back to your loft for a societally sanctioned fuck, Mr. Archer.”
“I could get behind that plan.”
Dane shook his head and grinned. “I’ll be the one behind it.”
Chapter 11
GIDEON LET Dane press him back onto the sheets of his bed in the loft. Fresh sheets, courtesy of the appearance of his cleaning service, Gideon noticed.
Dane’s face had a look of inward concentration as he put a bottle of lube and a condom on a towel next to Gideon’s hip, like an artist preparing his supplies before embarking on his creative journey.
Most of the time between them, sex was just sex. Amazing, mind-blowing, I-think-I-saw-God sex. But sometimes—though Dane would probably never besmirch his sybaritic principles by admitting it—Dane used sex to make a point. Usually to Gideon, but sometimes to Dane himself. Based on Gideon’s observation of the efficiency in Dane’s undressing and preparation, this was one of those times.
Not that it was a bad thing. Gideon would be willing to bet his fresh-off-the-lot BMW X6 that Dane’s current ruthless determination to fuck Gideon blind, stupid, and boneless was a reaction to the certificate currently residing in the safe. That didn’t mean Gideon wasn’t going to enjoy it.
Dane hadn’t kissed him or touched Gideon’s dick, but that hadn’t stopped it from rising to the occasion. Just the contact of their bare thighs was enough, that and the knowledge of how good it was going to be. They’d done everything, in every position they could think of. Each time Gideon swore it couldn’t be hotter, it was.
Gideon tucked his hands behind his head as Dane trailed a lube-slick thumb over Gideon’s balls, his perineum, his hole. He brought his knees up to offer better access.
“Why aren’t you always this cooperative?” Dane asked.
“I don’t always have your dick aimed at my ass.”
“Hmm. I should work on that.”
There were moments between them when Gideon thought his ribs would crack from the overload of frantic tenderness. Moments where he was so raw, so thin-skinned, he couldn’t look at Dane without those despised words leaking out. I love you, I love you, I love you. Thank God, it wasn’t going to be one of those times. Not with that look of clinical concentration on Dane’s face.
Dane slid one finger inside, and that was enough to remind Gideon he hadn’t been in the mood to bottom in a while. Not since their last time. Christ. He was pathetic.
He didn’t have to say anything. Dane stopped.
Lots more lube, slower, gradual pressure, Dane reading the shifts in the tension of his body until Gideon rocked down onto Dane’s hand, onto two fingers, grinding to the knuckles.
Dane tore the condom wrapper with his teeth, a sight that still made Gideon’s stomach do a slow flip, like it was the first time.
Then they were back to necessities.
“Can you…?” Dane dropped the rubber on Gideon’s stomach.
Yeah, if Dane stopped, there was the chance Gideon’s ass would take them back to square one, and he wanted the fuck. The solid slam of them together. Not this slow stretch and tease.
Gideon rolled the condom down Dane’s dick, lubed his hand, and held it for Dane to slide through, slicking the length of him. Hands tucked behind knees, Gideon blew out a breath as Dane lined up, and then the glide of his fingers became the heavy press of his fat dick.
Pain prickled for an instant, a burn that eased a second later as his body adjusted. Dane worked in deeper, filling Gideon perfectly, hitting all the good places inside, places Dane got to better than anyone.
Dane bit his lip, eyes gone dark, intent stare fucking into Gideon’s head as sure as the dick in his ass.
Do it. God, do it now.
Because then he’d only have to worry about his body. Be free of those dangerous thoughts and feelings. Just nerve and muscles, the drag of Dane’s cock in and out until Gideon had to reach for his own dick and get himself off.
Dane pressed on Gideon’s thighs, tipping his hips, spreading him. The last inch slid inside, and it felt so good Gideon wanted to scream with it.
Dane pulled almost all the way out, then drove in hard, forcing a hissed yesss from behind Gideon’s teeth.
They fucked faster, Gideon meeting the thrusts, grabbing at that heavy dick with his ass. Eyes, bodies locked, nothing but that contact. Connected and miles apart.
“Oh shit.” Dane groaned from inside his belly, the sound shuddering between them.
“So fucking good.”
It was. But then it always was or why would they still be at it when they both knew better. No matter how good the sex was, they would find a way to fuck it up when it was over.
Gideon’s bedframe was a solid piece of carpentry, but it started to shift as Dane drove him toward the headboard. They both reached up to grab the frame, flying together on those endorphins, on the sweet slam of their flesh.
Gideon’s eyes had drifted closed, and he opened them at exactly the right—or maybe it was the wrong moment, because he’d have given his left nut to see that look on Dane’s face out of bed, the one where Gideon was the only thing that mattered.
It dredged the words up in his throat, the ones Dane didn’t understand. The ones that made him impatient and frustrated. Gideon swallowed them back, turned I love you so fucking much into “Harder. God, Dane. Harder.”
“Yeah. Love fucking you.”
Close enough. Or, as the hollow hunger inside reminded him, as close as Gideon was going to get. He reached for his dick, palm still slick enough to make the glide smooth.
“Love watching you come, Gideon.”
A few strokes and he was there. Pleasure sparked deep inside, rolling out from his ass to his balls. Dane grinned and fucked Gideon through it, eyes bright, almost wet, teeth sinking into his lower lip.
“Oh fuck, you feel so good.” Dane’s eyes closed, his hips moving faster.
Gideon tipped over into the hard shocks of orgasm, nailing himself in the chin with his first shot.
Dane was right behind him, groaning and shuddering before collapsing o
nto Gideon’s chest. A breath later, Dane rubbed his nose in Gideon’s neck, murmuring, “Thank gods I didn’t wait until I was married.”
Gideon turned his head away as Dane nuzzled some more.
Dane lifted his head. “What?”
“Cramp.”
“Old man.” Dane shifted off and—a bit painfully—out.
Gideon patted the mattress to find the towel and wiped off his chest and chin.
“You suddenly allergic to jizz?” Dane asked.
“No.” Gideon swung his legs over the side of the bed.
“You know you’re home, right? No need to grab your clothes and take off.”
“Yeah, I got that.”
Dane crawled up behind him and ran a hand down Gideon’s back. “Look, if I said something stupid while I was coming, I’m sorry.”
Gideon pushed off the bed and into his bathroom. “Nothing to apologize for.”
From his spot on the bed, Dane called, “I know for a fact you don’t literally have a stick up your ass at the moment, but what the hell is the problem?”
“I’m fine. I just have to get some work done.”
“Today?”
“I’ve taken a lot of time off lately.”
“Oh, right.” Dane brushed past him to the toilet to rid himself of the condom.
Gideon opened the shower stall. “Got a man to support now.” He’d meant it as a tease, but even as the words left him he knew how Dane would take it. Too drained to fight, he spun on the tap.
“I didn’t ask you for this, asshole,” Dane yelled over the water.
“I know. I did.” Gideon ducked under the spray.
DANE KNEW he couldn’t count on the rest of his chemo letting him off this easy, but after the first of the new round he wasn’t feeling too shitty. Friday afternoon, he walked on the High Line, dodging the tourists snapping selfies and enjoying the bright green patches above the city. Although he only needed to stop and rest on a bench once, he didn’t make it as far as Chelsea Market like he’d planned.
It was weird being in the loft without Gideon. Dane had his laptop, tablet, and a recliner that cradled him like he was floating in water with a perfect view of Gideon’s TV or the sun sinking behind the buildings that blocked sight of the Hudson. But Dane felt like a ghost waiting for someone to haunt.
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